November 2, 2009

We did it for the baby.

If there was anything to be frightened of this Halloween, it was H1N1.

Our suburb has been hit hard with the flu. With incidence of H1N1 on the rise in our friends and neighbors, and a realization on Friday that Roscoe cannot be vaccinated against either flu strain for at least another 3 weeks, my inner hypochondriac went into overdrive.

After countless phone calls and internet searches I finally found a flu clinic in our area. We left our house at 8:30am on Halloween morning for doors that opened at 12:00pm. When we arrived at 9:00 there were already 60 or more people in line, and they were in it for the long hall with spectator chairs, coolers of food, and stacks of reading material. We grabbed breakfast, and got in line.

Mid-morning we called our families who decided to join us, and by noon the crowd had grown to well over 500.

At 12:05 the line began to move. We shuffled to the front where we entered an efficient and well organized assembly line. First we were handed the paperwork, and ushered to a waiting area. After 15 minutes our group was called back to the "approved, awaiting vaccination" holding zone. When a nurse called the 6 of us to a partitioned cubicle, we lined up to receive the vaccine.

H1N1 Graffiti

Like a scene from a Hollywood movie, the large crowds combined with the makeshift clinic setting and general H1N1 hysteria, mixed well with the undertones of Halloween.